Monkey tool nut cracker

Monkey tool nut cracker

Monkey tool nut cracker

Get in touch with your primitive side and enjoy smashing nuts as we used to thousands of years ago, just as our primate and monkey cousins still do.

The Monkey Tool nut cracker is designed by sculptor Mark Reed and is individually hand forged by blacksmiths in Norfolk, England. The base is a lump of steel heated red hot by fire and squashed by hammering, forging a dish shape into which the nut rests, the nut can then be cracked open with the steel stone, as our ancestors would have done. Try it; it’s remarkably satisfying and fun.You’ll find it has many other uses too! What’s more, by purchasing a monkey tool nut cracker you are helping to ensure the survival of our primate cousins as a proportion of the profits from the sale of the nut cracker are donated to charities working with rescued and adopted monkeys and apes.

Humans were thought to be the only species capable of making or using tools. The foresight, imagination, and dexterity required for tool use and construction were thought to be absent from the non-human primates. That all changed in 1960 when Jane Goodall observed wild chimpanzees modifying sticks in order to extract termites from mounds. Now, not only are chimps and humans the only apes known to use tools, but gorillas and orangutans as well. Even monkey species such as the bearded capuchin and the long-tailed macaque have been reported to habitually use stones as tools in the wild. The monkeys used tools for digging and for cracking seeds.

University of Georgia psychologist Dorothy Fragaszy and co-researchers, have just published the first direct scientific report of tool use among a population of wild capuchin monkeys. Using heavy stones transported to an "anvil" site in northeastern Brazil, the cat-sized monkeys routinely crack palm nuts, which grow in clusters close to the ground. This is the first scientific report to confirm a behavior previously studied only in wild populations of chimpanzees.

The study, appearing in the American Journal of Primatology adds important new information to the increasing body of knowledge that human beings are not the only primates who use tools. At one time, the use of tools was considered an important difference between humans and other primates.

"we see the behavior in an entire population and not in isolated individuals," said Fragaszy. "Also, it is the first time this behavior has been observed in wild capuchins. What we found is that these capuchins are extremely skilled weightlifters. The video we tookshows just how remarkable their ability to lift these stones has become."